Facebook Inc. FB, -1.74% on Wednesday introduced a 360-degree “spherical” video feature in its newsfeed, allowing users to roam around inside the latest “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” trailer.
Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.marketwatch.com
Facebook offers virtual-reality ‘Star Wars’ experience
With the new feature, viewers can change their viewpoint within images including NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” and a LeBron James clip. For mobile devices, users either just tilt the phone itself or swipe their finger across the screen to adjust the angle.
Vice, Discovery and GoPro have also signed on for the first version. In the case of the “Star Wars” trailer, users can look behind a moving aircraft or see what is happening on the side by dragging their computer mouse over the video on a desktop.
The new video offer is so far only available for Google Inc.’s GOOG, -2.21% GOOGL, -2.25% Android phones. It is not yet compatible with Apple Inc.’s AAPL, -0.25% operating system iOS, but will be within a few months, Facebook said.
Facebook is attempting to get its users hooked on virtual reality — technology the company has bet big on. “Over time, we’ve seen that people enjoy more immersive content in their News Feeds”, Maher Saba, engineering director for video at Facebook, wrote in a blog post on Wednesday.
See on Scoop.it – Augmented World